Kate Stewart and Steve Langasek, members of the Ubuntu release team, announce the release of Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) Alpha 1 for the Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin and Xubuntu flavors. The full release announcement can be found at:

Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph writes about the continued work of the Ubuntu California supported non-profit Partimus which has recently worked to move several computers to a school in Oakland. Now running Lubuntu, this post includes photos of the computers now in use.

Danny Snowman writes that those wishing to test bleeding edge features in KDE can now do so without waiting six months between distro updates thanks to Project Neon. Project Neon is a nightly build of the latest KDE trunk. A similar option is also available for Krita, KDE's painting and image editing application.

Nicholas Skaggs details some of the progress from the Trusty Cycle by the Ubuntu Quality team. Some notable updates include the arrival of Alpha 1 for participating flavors, getting the papercuts project started for Trusty, and getting automated testing in place. There is also some work underway to improve the Ubuntu startup disk creator.

Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph of the Ubuntu Classroom team writes that they are looking for instructors to hold session at the Ubuntu User Days on January 25th and 26th. "User Days was created to be a set of courses offered during a one day period to teach the beginning or intermediate Ubuntu user the basics to get them started with Ubuntu"

Ali Linx of the Ubuntu GNOME team lists some of the great achievements that has been achieved during 2013, including becoming an official flavor, growth of social media and their contributor community and more formal team organization.

Jorge Castro writes that Ask Ubuntu, as well as other Stack Exchange sites, now have hats available to members who contribute by editing posts, answering questions, upvoting, reviewing, and many other ways. Hats appear in your profile picture after being obtained. A page listing available hats and the actions needed to get them is also available.

Benjamin Kerensa proposes that Canonical form a User Advocacy Team consisting of both community contributors and Canonical Employees to listen to issues impacting users. The new team would then produce reports to be given to the developers and product managers at Canonical. The goal is to create a tool to get user feedback from Ubuntu installations, share feedback, and "create a conduit between users and developers."

Jackson Doak updates us on his progress of building an Ubuntu-themed PC and shows us several photographs in the tenth part of the series. Jackson also offers some Kubuntu stickers to his readers and acknowledges his sponsors.

Danny Snowman writes that free and open source software (FOSS) is now pre-installed instead of Microsoft Windows in schools across Taiwan. A set of software called Ezgo, which uses Kubuntu as a base distribution, is installed on more than 10,000 PCs in elementary schools. The aim of the project is to get FOSS in all subject areas, not just computer classes.

The Kubuntu team announces that packages for the release of KDE SC 4.12 are available for Kubuntu 12.04 LTS, 13.10 and the development release. The team tell us from where the packages can be downloaded and to where bugs should be reported.

Mark Shuttleworth writes "Perhaps the biggest change in Ubuntu since 12.04 LTS has been our shift, under Rick's leadership, towards rigorous, highly automated, test-based QA across all of Ubuntu - server, desktop and mobile." Mark tell us what he loves about the process and provides a screenshot of what the 64-bit x86 server test run looked like on the day he wrote his post.

Jono Bacon announces that they are looking for instructors for the upcoming Ubuntu App Developer week in January. Jono writes "This is a week chock-full of tutorial sessions showing you how to use different aspects of the Ubuntu SDK across QML, HTML5, Scopes and other projects for building powerful, elegant, converged apps and content that runs across phone, tablet, and desktop."

He asks those interested in presenting to get their proposals in by December 31st and provides instructions on how to submit.

"The Ubuntu Technical Board election has begun and ballots sent out to Ubuntu Developers by Ubuntu Community Council member Scott Ritchie. Voting closes at end of day UTC on Dec 31st." The candidates are listed together with a link to their Launchpad profiles, and an email address is provided for developers to contact if they did not receive a ballot.

With the end of life of Windows XP coming up in the spring, Ali Linx of the StartUbuntu project seeks contributors to help spread the word about Ubuntu through social media, blogs and more. He is also looking for opportunities to spread the word in local media outlets.

Canonical has released a two page flyer available for download detailing some of the details about and benefits of using Ubuntu in education. "Every day millions of students conduct research, produce assignments, correspond with each other and their teaching staff, and do many other things using the Ubuntu desktop."

This article in Business Korea discusses the upcoming end of life of Windows XP and the alternatives available for businesses, with a specific look at Ubuntu. They note that many applications are specifically written for Windows, but goes on to say most users can complete tasks through a browser. The article goes on to say: "Ubuntu not only offers Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox but a browser for Linux, as well. When using Chrome, users can synchronize their preferences settings, and Internet surfing and working with basic documents becomes an easy task. Ubuntu also supports the Korean language natively, and can run on low-power PCs such as netbook. Most important for some, Ubuntu is free."

Ubuntu finally embraces solid state drives as it preps for mobile push

Terrence O'Brien of Engadget writes that Ubuntu will be adding TRIM support for solid state drives in the next release of Ubuntu. Terrence writes that Linux has lagged behind in support, in spite of it being "an essential command for maintaining the performance and health of solid state drives, since they operate in a fundamentally different way than your standard spinning-platter."

Joey-Elijah Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! invites to join him as he takes "a personal look back at the big stories, highlights and the odd lowlight of 2013 by covering Ubuntu Touch, Mir, The Edge, and the releases of Raring Ringtail and Saucy Salamander. Joey-Elijah also invites his readers to submit their "standout" moments of the year.

TechRadar have reproduced an article published in Linux Format in which Jono Bacon writes about the changes in Ubuntu since 2004 and the current focus of building the first version of the Ubuntu Phone. Jono looks at Unity, how to navigate the Ubuntu phone's screen, the HUD and convergence. He shows us how the Ubuntu phone software can be tested and concludes "Although there is a long road ahead, the journey has already been rewarding... who knows what the future holds?"

Joey-Elijah Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! informs us that U1Files is an unofficial, open-source and cross-platform app that is primarily aimed at Android but is "100% compatible with iOS, Ubuntu Phone and other Qt-compatible platforms." Joey-Elijah provides some screenshots of the app and points out that Canonical maintain official mobile applications for a number of platforms but not Ubuntu Touch.

Michael Larabel of Phoronix informs us that the performance changes that can now been seen in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS come from moving to Linux kernel 3.12 and Mesa 10.1. Michael shows us the results of his tests and says more will follow but "the benchmarks today are just so any early adopters can get an early idea for Intel performance changes out of these Linux development packages."

razvi of iloveubuntu notes that updated versions of Mahjongg, Sudoku and Mines have landed in Ubuntu 14.04 via the regular updates. razvi provides a screenshot of the new applications, and notes that their arrival adds more 3.10 versions to the upcoming LTS.

Joey-Elijah Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! informs us that the first alpha releases of five flavors for Ubuntu 14.04 are now available. Joey-Elijah gives us a few details of what is new in each of the releases and provides links to download the alpha images.

Michael Larabel of Phoronix informs us that Ubuntu GNOME will continue to ship an X.Org Server based environment for 14.04 LTS and most likely for 14.10 too. Michael quotes the following from Ubuntu GNOME's Google+ page: "At some point in the distant future we will probably switch to Wayland, but right now its not even close to being ready."

"Alan Pope, Mark Johnson, Tony Whitmore, and Laura Cowen are in Studio A with a lot of mulled wine and some mince pies with homemade brandy butter for the forty-third, and final, episode of Season Six of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team!"

In this week's show:

We look back at our predictions for 2013 and make up some new ones for 2014.

We have A Quiz!

We also discuss what we've been up to lately.

We take a look at what's been happening in the news.

We catch up with what's been happening in the Ubuntu community.

We have some Command Line Lurve for grml-rescueboot.

And we read your feedback.

"That's all for this episode, this season, and indeed this year. We will probably be back in 2014, when we will continue bringing you up to date with all the latest news about Ubuntu and free software."

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://community.ubuntu.com/contribute/